Mushoku Tensei (LN) - Volume SS - Chapter 20

Short Story:

A Swordsman Only Goes Sober Once

AT PAUL’S FUNERAL, everyone brought something that carried a memory of him to the feast. Roxy brought a bottle of imported beer.

“Back when I was Rudy’s private tutor, Paul didn’t drink much…” Roxy began a story from when Rudeus was still only little.

It was Rudeus’s fifth birthday. These days, it was common enough knowledge not to need an explanation, but humans had a custom of treating birthdays that were multiples of five as special. Rudeus’s fifth birthday was no exception. The family all got him presents and put all their energy into celebrating. Roxy gave Rudeus a staff. Through one thing and another, that staff was now in Sylphie’s possession, but that was another story.

That day, the Greyrat household threw a small party. Roxy was allowed to join in the festivities, feeling grateful to them for treating her like family. It was that night that it happened.

“Hm?” Roxy awoke in the middle of the night, sensing something wrong. Her long career as an adventurer meant that even when she slept in a soft bed, she could wake in an instant to any noise… All right, that was a lie. She had been sound asleep and just happened to wake up in time to hear a faint noise. It sounded as though someone was moving around in the corridor.

“A burglar?” Thanks to Paul’s efforts in Buena, the village was, by and large, a safe place where people were kind to outsiders. But there were always people who’d fall victim to temptation. If such a person were to break in somewhere, it naturally would be the house with the most money. And because Paul was the resident knight, they were the most well-off family in the village.

“For goodness’ sake.” Roxy got out of bed, then, staff at the ready, she went out into the corridor on tip-toes. After this family had done so much for her, the least she could do was throw the intruder out quietly so as not to disturb them. So decided, Roxy went down the stairs toward the source of the noise.

The noise was coming from the kitchen. She peeked inside, and saw someone with their head buried in the back of the cupboard, apparently scrounging for food, it seemed. No one in the Asura Kingdom had too little to eat. The land was so fertile that you could find any number of edible leaves and fruit by the side of the road. That being said, a person living in a village might look to other people’s larders first. In any case, if it was food, not money, they were after, she could talk them around.

“Are you hungry?” she called out softly.

The figure jumped, then slowly drew its head out from the cupboard.

“Oh…it’s just you, Roxy.” There, a guilty look on his face, was Paul.

“Huh? Paul? What are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

“Um, nothing really.” Paul tried to hide the item in his hand, overtly avoiding her gaze. But Roxy managed to catch a glimpse—it was a bottle of alcohol.

“You’re drinking so late at night?”

“This is, um…” Paul quickly tried to hide the bottle behind his back. 

Roxy was puzzled. It wasn’t as though alcohol was forbidden in this house, and Paul had been drinking at the birthday party, too.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Look, since Rudy was born, I’ve been trying not to overdo it with the drinking. I don’t want people to see me making a fool of myself drunk, y’know? Especially Rudy.”

“I can understand that, I suppose.”

“But in the end, it’s not enough, y’know? Like, sometimes you just want to get off-your-face drunk, or…do you see what I mean? Rudy’s already five, right? And it was only just the other day he was born…”

Roxy didn’t like alcohol very much. Most of it was bitter, and she always ended up drunk straight away. But she understood wanting to cut loose at a party—especially if you were always restraining yourself. 

“Yes, I understand,” she said.

“Haha. You’re doing me a favor,” Paul said. “But don’t tell Zenith, all right? She’d be pissed for sure if she knew I was getting drunk by myself.”

“I won’t. But in exchange…” 

That day, as a condition of keeping his secret, Roxy asked Paul if she might join him for a drink.

“He told me to keep it a secret…but that doesn’t matter anymore, does it?” she said, then downed the last cup of beer. Usually, she found alcohol bitter and unappetizing. But she remembered how on that day, it had tasted unbelievably good.